Fredrick “Geno” Womack didn’t need to see the data to know that Jackson’s homicides had fallen. 

Gone are the nightmarish days of 2020, when Womack, the executive director of Operation Good, said he could step outside his nonprofit’s south Jackson headquarters and smell the metallic scent of crystal meth in the air. It’s been years, he said, since he has seen an armed man roaming the sidewalks of McDowell Road.

A violence interrupter, Womack said he and his colleagues are encountering less conflict to moderate. They’re seeing more disputes end in social media posts than gunshots.

“I don’t have to hang as many of those up in my office,” he said, nodding toward a commemorative shirt with a young man’s face on it. 

Earlier this year, local law enforcement released numbers backing up Womack’s observation: By the end of 2025, police in Jackson recorded 74 homicides that had occurred within city limits. The Jackson Police Department recorded 63 of those, with the rest occurring in Capitol Police’s jurisdiction.

It’s the lowest number of killings the city has seen in years, virtually half the high water mark of more than 150 in 2021. Police officials celebrated the reduction, praising their recent efforts in collaborative and technology-driven policing. 

But tell it to Terry Williams, a south Jackson pastor and retired security guard, and he’ll tell you why he doesn’t believe that story. 

In recent weeks, Williams’ neighborhood between Terry Road and Interstate 55 has seen a spate of bloody incidents: A man was shot and found dead inside a burning car before the New Year. In the first homicide of 2026, a dead man with a gunshot wound to the buttocks was found lying in a yard. Days later, a man, his wife and their friend were shot at while sitting in their car. 

While killings in Jackson have declined significantly, the drop coincides with a national trend, with some analyses showing the city’s homicide rate still ranks among the highest in the country.

“In my opinion, sometimes numbers are projected just to make it seem like things are under control,” Williams told Mississippi Today. “Crime is out of control.” 

Womack and Williams are alike: They are close in age, the same race and part of a similar community. Yet the two men’s differing perceptions of public safety in Jackson underscore a complicated truth in the city once labeled “America’s murder capital,” where crime is often studied systemically but experienced individually.

“It can be one murder in the city of Jackson, and when it’s affecting you, crime is bad,” Womack said. 

The competing realities may be exacerbated by poor recording of crime statistics. While the city’s homicide numbers from 2020 to 2025 made national headlines, data corresponding to the wave of killings cannot be pulled from the FBI’s national repository. The gap leaves calculations up to individual researchers or the media and makes it difficult to accurately compare Jackson’s homicide rate to cities across the country. 

Plus, in a longstanding policy about the “proper use” of its statistics, the FBI has “strongly discouraged” observers from using its statistics to compile rankings or compare the number of homicides in one city to another, but news outlets across the country have continued to do so. 

This leaves little common ground between Jacksonians like Williams — those who regard the city as unsafe — and those who say the city’s crime is unfairly characterized by conservative politicians, suburban outsiders or the media. 

“Why can’t the decrease be celebrated at least for five minutes before we are reminded that it’s still not good enough,” said Jhai Keeton, a real estate investor and the city’s former director of planning and economic development, in response to a recent analysis from WLBT showing Jackson remains the “deadliest city in nation.” 

The distrust is inextricable from the racism facing the 85% Black city, said Christopher Routh, a former Hinds County public defender who still tries cases in the city. It’s common for Jacksonians to be asked about their experiences with crime or to hear racist jokes about how they live in a war zone, he said. 

Not only that, but the recent homicide wave was one justification for depriving Jackson’s city government of resources, Routh said, when the Legislature poured funding into the state-run Capitol Police.

“It taps very clearly into our racial history,” Routh said. “Crime is the blinking neon sign that everyone uses to hate on Jackson.” 

Living in the neighborhood on the news

A few years ago, Williams was standing in his yard when a man walked by and asked him for a cigarette. He asked the man what was wrong. 

“My brother stabbed me,” Williams recalled the man saying before continuing on his way. 

Williams, who bought his south Jackson house with his wife in 2008, said he interacts with just a few of his neighbors. Williams didn’t know the man who had been stabbed, but the encounter made Williams feel that simply existing in this community puts him in harm’s way.

“It affects everybody, whether people say it does or not,” Williams said. 

Other than his home, which he likes, Williams said his relationship to safety living in south Jackson won’t change unless he sees the city take steps to address crime — preferably in the form of more officers patrolling his neighborhood.

It frustrates Williams, whose resume of nationwide security jobs includes Jackson’s municipal jail, that he pays taxes but does not see police on his streets. He thinks that’s because he lives among “the outcasts” — in a neglected zone once home to working-class white people that now has mostly Black residents. 

“They call Jackson a city,” he said. “I call it a town, because a city would manage its territory a whole lot better.” 

Speaking of territory, Williams lives in JPD’s Precinct 1, which covers the southern region of the city and is home to 70,000 people, according to the department’s public presentations. 

JPD has considered the precinct a crime “hotspot” for years now. Last year, 24 — or 38% — of the city’s homicides occurred in this precinct, followed by 18 homicides in Precinct 3 in parts of northwest and west central Jackson, 13 in Precinct 2 in far west Jackson, and eight in Precinct 4 in northeast Jackson, according to the department.

In an interview, JPD’s Precinct 1 Capt. Kendrick Williams (no relation) answered a question about the recent wave of violent incidents in Terry Williams’ neighborhood by saying, “Crime is down across the city.” He could not recall the number of homicides in his precinct in the last year. He also said he could not discuss the recent spate of violent incidents in Terry Williams’ neighborhood because of “active investigations.” 

“Where there is crime, period, it’s going to be of concern to me,” Capt. Williams said. 

The captain said his precinct is home to many homeless people and abandoned properties, which contribute to residents’ perceptions of safety. Nonetheless, he said he wants Jacksonians in his precinct to feel safer. His patrol officers spend their days responding to calls, going “where the need takes us.” 

“We have to see if there’s a way we can help them all, and the only way to gauge that is to see how much we can help everyone and change the narrative of how people feel,” Capt. Williams said. “If a person feels safe, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”

Terry Williams is left to grapple with the reality of living in a neighborhood that others often hear about from the news. As the sun set on a recent weekday, one woman warned this reporter to go home before dark as she picked up a little black dog and hustled up her stoop. 

Centralized numbers unavailable

In addition to their lived experiences, residents have contended with inaccurate or incomplete crime data from the city in the past, spurring skepticism toward any reported progress.

JPD notifies the public of homicides through press releases to news outlets throughout the city, but the department previously released its homicide numbers through two primary outlets: weekly crime stats on the city’s website and annual crime reports from the FBI. 

Beginning in 2019, two problems arose that led the department to ultimately revamp both processes. That year, local TV station WLBT discovered JPD was releasing lower year-to-date numbers of major crimes, such as homicide and grand larceny, on days the stats were shared with the public. Soon after, JPD began releasing monthly instead of weekly crime reports. Then it ceased routinely releasing numbers altogether in the summer of 2020. 

Meanwhile, the FBI started using a new data system. In late 2020, JPD stopped supplying its figures after becoming one of thousands of police departments that lacked the right technology to report to the FBI. 

The FBI’s numbers for JPD picked back up last year. Even then, the numbers appear incomplete, with JPD reporting 26 homicides in Jackson last year.

Statistics for Capitol Police, which also just began reporting homicides to the FBI last year, also appear to be partial figures, with the FBI’s database showing 10 homicides for that agency instead of 11. Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey said his department has been working to upgrade its database ever since he took office in 2022. 

“Look, this whole process of trying to get this system up and running, it’s been a nightmare,” Luckey said. “As an administrator, you want to make sure that the intel — the data that you’re collecting, the cases you’re reporting on — you want to make sure they’re as accurate as possible. Whenever you know that you have a system that’s not up to par, it’s very frustrating.” 

JPD did not respond to questions about why its figures are incomplete in the FBI’s database. 

So what do the missing figures mean for Jacksonians? Those who want to know the number of homicides in their city must then turn to local news outlets, which all feature different counts. For instance, in 2021 — the year widely agreed to be the city’s deadliest — WLBT reported 160 killings, while the Clarion Ledger reported 157.

Justifiable homicides included in JPD’s yearly count

When figures are available, Womack said, the numbers often lack context that could help Jacksonians understand what they mean for their city. 

In the criminal justice context, the labeling of a death as a homicide means a person was killed by another. Along with the coroner, police are supposed to investigate to determine if that is what happened. 

Once officers conduct their investigations into suspected Jackson homicides, the count may change. For instance, police departments only count homicides that occurred in their jurisdiction — meaning if someone were found dead in Jackson but killed elsewhere, JPD would not count the killing toward the city’s total. 

The scenario played out last year when a man named Bernard Mack was found deceased in a car on Ridgeland Drive in south Jackson. One news outlet ran a headline saying the man was “killed inside vehicle in Jackson,” though JPD and the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office had quickly learned he was killed in nearby Edwards. 

Not all homicides lead to criminal cases. The figure also includes justified homicides — those committed in self defense. 

Last year, two homicides that occurred in south Jackson were cases of self-defense, according to a list the department provided to Mississippi Today. 

But the majority of killings in the city, Womack and city officials agree, stem from “interpersonal conflict.” Few are random. Understanding the circumstances can be important to feelings of safety across the city, Womack said, but residents are not usually shown the full picture. 

Womack keeps his own spreadsheet of homicides in the south Jackson area his men patrol. He puts the killings into four categories — street, drugs, domestic and interpersonal — for the purpose of prioritizing where to send his violence interrupters to stop retaliatory killings. 

Interpersonal killings are the most prevalent and the easiest to isolate, Womack said. The cases often go like this: Two friends get into an argument, then one shoots and kills the other. While family members may want revenge, Womack said he’s had success helping them understand what went wrong in their loved one’s relationship. He said a similar trend occurs in domestic killings involving couples.

Street-related killings — those involving multiple groups — are the most likely to get out of control. 

“It all started over a girl, but everybody forgot about that, and now it’s, ‘He shot my homeboy,’ so it’s back and forth killing,” Womack said.  

In almost every killing, Womack said, poverty is a factor because he is working in a community mostly void of economic opportunity. For instance, Womack said young men involved in a rap group caught up in a street dispute may have banded together to make money. 

“But they don’t tell the story like that,” he said. “They tell the story based on what looks the most dire for Jackson.” 

This may cause some residents to feel threatened, like they’re next, Womack said. If news outlets more frequently named the realities underlying these incidents, Womack said, it may not change the overall picture of danger in the city, but it could help residents understand if they are truly at risk.

“I’m not gonna say it would make Jackson look safer, but it would change a person’s mindset about what’s really going on,” he said. “The way they tell it on the news, people don’t even want to get out on the interstate when they ride through Jackson, because they make Jackson sound like the worst place ever.” 

Perception becoming reality

Kempt brick homes with clean-cut lawns line the streets of the diverse neighborhood where Lashia Brown-Thomas lives. 

A few years ago, the then-JPD officer recalled that a white man with “tattoos everywhere” knocked on her front door asking for the location of the nearest Walmart. Through her Ring camera, she told him to get off her porch.  

The brief encounter is the scariest thing that’s happened to Brown-Thomas, who became Ward 6’s councilwoman in 2025, in her recent memory. But she said that’s not the perception many Jacksonians have of her community. 

“People have stamped south Jackson,” she said. 

This is not to say Brown-Thomas is without concerns. In fact, she has so many it’s hard to know where to start. Driving around south Jackson’s hilly streets, the councilwoman talked about the future she’d like to see for her ward, but she kept interrupting herself to point out the problems she sees — an abandoned home with a mishmash of objects littering the yard, a disheveled man walking by the road, a utility pole featuring dangling wires that once had copper, a dingy gas station known for shoot-outs. 

What’s the solution? She’d like to see more Jacksonians visiting her community, which she thinks will only be possible with more police and economic investment. Specifically, Brown-Thomas hopes Capitol Police will expand further south, an agency whose patrol cars, she said, are more conspicuous than those of the department she served in for 25 years. 

“We need more visibility with officers,” Brown-Thomas said. “People want to feel safe, and if people cannot feel safe, they will not come to the area.” 

This also means changing an assessment that Brown-Thomas, Williams and Womack all agree on: Outsiders come to south Jackson to commit crime because of the perception that they can get away with it in this part of town, creating a cycle of crime that repels law-abiding Jacksonians. 

Another solution may lie in encouraging more Jacksonians to simply get out of their bubbles. 

Stephen Brown, a hip-hop artist and producer who recently took over operations of south Jackson’s Riverside Collective coffee shop, grew up in south Jackson. Not once can he recall stepping foot in north Jackson. 

“I thought all of north Jackson was the same,” he said. “Anything past High Street was where rich white people stay.” 

Then, in high school, he made a friend who lived in Tracewood, and he realized that north Jackson, just like south Jackson, was not a monolith.

Correction 2/4/2026: This story has been updated to reflect that the homicide figures were released in January.